Can't get much more off topic! ;)

Sorry to be a pain here on the great vBSEO forums, but vB.org has been.... problematic... for awhile now for getting help/advice/etc about non-specific mods.

I was hoping I could throw myself on the mercy of the community here and ask a quick question?

On my forums, our users utilise search.php?do=getdaily&days=7 to find active topics. I would like to set up some forums for RSS feeds of appropriate deals etc, however once I do this, the active topics are filled with these feed threads rather than user generated content.

Is there a way that I can restrict forums from showing up in the active topics whilst still allowing them to be indexed by vB itself?

Again, apologies if this is outside the remit - but he who doesn't ask never receives!

Thanks in advance!

You can simply tack on &exclude=1,2,3 to the url where 1,2 and 3 are forumId's you don't want in the rss. You can do this for any search url or rss yrl.

Thanks for your reply however I don't think I asked the question with the details needed.

The RSS's I spoke of will be parsed into my forums from 3rd party feeds - essentially showing up as posts in selected forums...

ie.

PARENTING NEWS
> BBC
> CNN
> Yahoo

Ebay Deals
> Childrens Clothing
> Toys

etc

Those RSS delivered posts is what I want to filter outside the returned results of
Search Results - MumsOnline - Where Parents Talk


Hopefully that explains a bit more of what I'm looking to do which is basically just toggle forums from showing up in the "Active Topoics" or "What's New" results.

On import, they end up as regular posts. You can only block at the forum level. You should keep all the RSS stuff in its own forum, and then its easy to exclude. If you merge it with human posts, there's no way to block it as there's no 'this post was human or rss' flag in the db.

I was afraid of that!

Thank you for your help Brian - once again, you've just proven to me that my continued license fee is well worth the money! It's not often staff for one company will help their users with someone else's product.

Just to update this a bit... I've had a play and I can't seem to figure out how to exclude forums from showing up in active topics. Is this an inbuilt toggle in vB or do I have to mod it?

I've just installed this but to no avail... I think the 4.1 iteration broke the rewrite.

I'm just looking for an elegant way to exclude an influx of automated content from the facility my users use the most to interact with human posters!

You will need to edit the templates where these items are called (in the navbar, etc) and physically add the &exclude parameter to the urls.

I guess I'm being thick because it's nearly midnight and I'm trying to get the forums working as well as working a 12 hour 'normal' job... But, I understand the exclude parameter - however I thought that was added to internal rss feeds being fed to external sites.

If I'm bringing in a 3rd party RSS feed to parse into my existing forums, adding the exclude array into navbar doesn't click with me...

Unless you mean in all instances of:

Code:

search.php?do=getdaily&hours=12

ect, I add on the exclusion?

In my case, I'm using this to handle the navbar menu for active topics...

So I would modify my current settings from:

Code:

1|1|0|1||Active Topics|1|0|0||
2|0|1|2|search.php?do=getdaily&hours=12|Last 12 Hours|1|0|0||
3|0|1|3|search.php?do=getdaily&days=1|Last Day|1|0|0||
4|0|1|4|search.php?do=getdaily&days=2|Two Days|1|0|0||
5|0|1|5|search.php?do=getdaily&days=3|Three Days|1|0|0||
6|0|1|6|search.php?do=getdaily&days=7|Seven Days|1|0|0||

to

Code:

1|1|0|1||Active Topics|1|0|0||
2|0|1|2|search.php?do=getdaily&hours=12&exclude=1,2,3|Last 12 Hours|1|0|0||
3|0|1|3|search.php?do=getdaily&days=1&exclude=1,2,3|Last Day|1|0|0||
4|0|1|4|search.php?do=getdaily&days=2&exclude=1,2,3|Two Days|1|0|0||
5|0|1|5|search.php?do=getdaily&days=3&exclude=1,2,3|Three Days|1|0|0||
6|0|1|6|search.php?do=getdaily&days=7&exclude=1,2,3|Seven Days|1|0|0||

And, my tired confusion, I'm going to pass out before my next 12 hour shift that beings in 6 hours time.

Thank you again for all your help Brian - I do hope I managed to figure out what you meant in order to save some face!

As stated above, you can only block this stuff at the forum level.

Thus, if you RSS IN from joesblog.com into forum2
you can &exclude=2

If forum2 has posting from humans as well, you can't block it without blocking the himan posts either.l

I think I got it after 5 hours sleep and several large coffees later!

Thanks again Brian! vBSEO should have a donate button so people can show their appreciation for the brilliant service you offer here! I'd buy another license, but I don't have another forum to run so until then, you'll just have view my continued subscription as my thank you!

Take care and thank you again!